Monday, December 23, 2013

This is my initial layout, but I am not sure if it is going to be the final one too. :)

I will start working from the tea towel (center) out and see how it looks in fabric.
It's still very hard for me to see how things are going to look from a drawing on the computer...
Probably the Greek border (top/bottom) will be smaller and thinner than the one shown above... but for now I will leave it like that.
The little motifs on the side of the central image are paper piecing reproduction of the motif that is in the lower band of the tea towel. I designed those little motifs myself. All the other blocks are part of the Paper Piecing Vintage BOM by Jennifer. I just mixed the colors and duplicated the blocks few times. Each block will be 6''. A couple of blocks from the BOM are missing because I couldn't visualize them in my layout. They will be probably included in the back.

Do you have any comment about my layout? Anything that you would change?
I will make each block scrappy, but I hope to be able to keep the white/blue/aqua palette of that layout because I really like the combination.

Now I hope to be able to finish the center of the wall-hanging before the year ends, so that I will be ready to add the blocks for the BOM as soon as they are released!!

And in the past months I forgot to share with you the blocks that I sent to my partners for the Block Swap.
Agnes asked some traditional block (not stars) and I made here the Beggar's Blocks and the Storm at Sea

And Linda asked for a log cabin with greens or purples. These are the blocks I sent her:

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

I am done with step 3 of Celtic Solstice Mystery QAL.
This time was Half Square Triangles (!!happy!!) and pinwheels (!!not-so-happy!!).

I would have never thought I could say this... but I love HST!! :)

I was used to hate them... but then I came across 2 wonderful things:

Melissa's tutorial for HST, during the Star Surround QAL (post here), that taught me how to cut the initial squares bigger than the final size of the HST, sew the squares with possible imperfections and still trim them to perfection!!!

My Secret Santa sent me the "Clover Finger Press" tool... when I saw it I thought "ok, nice, but probably will be another plastic tool that I will use twice and then forget in my drawers"... wrong!!! that's the most AMAZING TOOL that has ever been invented :) it's just perfect for my style of sewing... I am not very happy when I have to go to the ironing board to press seams... and it's a nightmare for me to press the seam open with the iron, I keep burning myself and I get frustrated because I don't have much control on what is happening under the iron... this tool solves all the problems!! you can use it to press the seam right where you sew... and if you press it from one side it takes like 1 second to have a perfectly pressed seam... if you press it open it takes probably 2.5 seconds to get a perfectly pressed seam, with no burned fingers!! and it is designed to have the perfect handle and the perfect tip to press your seam without too much effort!

So thanks to Melissa and my Secret Santa I got perfect HST!!!
The pinwheels are not as perfect, but they are pretty good :) I still have issues sewing a precise quarter-inch seam all the way... and there is no trimming you can do to the pinwheels to get them to be perfect...

But I really enjoyed this step of the Mystery QAL... I don't know if I have the right amount of pieces because I decided to divide by 4 the small size quilt and 25/4 is not a whole number ;) but still I will add the missing pieces or discard the extra ones once the mystery is revealed!

P.S. If someone is wondering where is the post for the step 2 of the QAL...well... I didn't have the time to tackle that clue yet :) I printed few paper piecing chevrons patterns but I didn't have the time to sew them yet... Christmas presents took over, I guess you all understand! :)

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Please please please...take 5 minutes of your time to check if you are a no-reply blogger!!
There are tons of tutorial that shows you how to check and how to stop this terrible thing that is preventing you to get new friends, replies to your comments and prizes!!!

BTW: many people are no-reply blogger but they connected with me through FB or Google+... so even if I didn't see your email, I tossed your name in the drawing... but just because it's Christmas and I didn't want to sound lazy :) but please, it's very sad when I have a price and no way to contact the winner...

I didn't make you jump through hoops to get in the giveaway, so do make ME jump through hoops of fire just to find a way to contact you!!!

So pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease check if you are a no-reply blogger NOW!!

Ok... I assume you checked and you are back because you want to know who is the winner of Sew Mama Sew giveaway... and Mr. Random picked comment number 24

Congratulation Celia! I sent you an email to get you mailing info!
And BTW, thanks everyone for your advises on how to use/store scraps!! I got great ideas!!!

And now, since lately I have been receiving a lot of comments and support for my paper piecing blocks, here 5 new patterns!!

And if you tried any of the blocks, please please please please send me a picture of the block or publish the picture on the FiS Flickr Group (or both of them :) ). I would love to see your work!!

And with today's blocks, I shared with you all the blocks of my Sword in the Stone quilt (mystery revealed ;) )!!
In the Disney Quilt page you can see how I put together the blocks... don't ask me how I did it :) I don't have any measurement or instructions... I just put a wide sashing to each block and then I put them on the floor, turned them a little to get the wonky look and then sew together the different sections... I guess there are tutorials for that if you need help... I just eyeballed everything :)

Feel free to look around :)
But let's get down to the giveaway business :)
Here are some 2 fat quarter, 2 fat eight and some embroidery floss!!

(sorry for the blurry picture, but I couldn't get anything better last night :) )

Rules are simple (GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED! winner is Celia, comment 24):

leave a comment below answering some simple questions: what is your favorite project to use scraps? And how do you store scraps? :)

for an extra entry, follow me through blogger or bloglovin (buttons in the side bar), or become a friend on Facebook, or follow me on Pinterest (http://www.pinterest.com/tweloq/) ... or contact me on FB and add a second comment below to tell me how you follow! (new followers are welcome! and if you are already following, just let me know how!!)

Important notes:

the giveaway will close on December 13 at (5 p.m. PST), and winner will be announced by email no later than Sunday, December 15.

this giveaway is open to anyone (US and non-US)

comments are going to be moderated, so they will not be published immediately. But in 24h I promise that I will approve all the comments that are not spam :)

if you are a no-reply blogger, please leave your email in the comment because I will NOT publish comments by no-reply bloggers without the email (I need a way to contact you if you win). If you are worried about spam, just type your email like "tweloq [space] at [space] gmail [dot] com" or similar :)

!!! IMPORTANT !!! During the last giveaway I received at least 15 comments from no-reply bloggers and didn't to add them in the drawing (even if I appreciate the comment, I need a way to contact you if you win). So if you don't receive an email from me answering your comment, come back and put another comment with your email!!!

For my home:
note pads (the one with the cat says: "Get this done RIGHT MEOW... I'm not kitten" :) :) how cool is that??!?), kitchen towels, an oven mitt (actually an owl mitt!! :) ), a magnet and a owl jar (I think Santa made that for me!! It looks perfect, but I think the cover is handmade for me :) )
Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

pins, needles, rotary cutter blade, small square ruler, colorful threads, a thing to press the seams (it's already in use, so I don't have the package and I don't know the proper name :)) Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

I started the Celtic Solstice Mystery from Bonnie Hunter.
But following guidelines it's just not my style!! :)
So first of all, I decided to do the small version/4 because I don't want to buy too much fabric and I want to see the mystery before deciding if I want to do the small quilt or something smaller.

Then I hate triangles, so how did I do the first step which was triangles-in-a-square? Paper piecing obviously :) I draw my triangles-in-a-square on graph paper and then sew on them. No triangles to precut, no dog ears to match or not match, no scant quarter inch seam, no seams to rip... just sew on the line and get perfect (or pretty good) triangles! And I left the paper behind them so that they have an added stability until they will be in the final layout!!

Then I decided to fuse two other events starting in 2014 and make a single project out of the two.
For the Tea Towel Challenge 2014 I picked the following tea towel to be the center of my wall-hanging (probably... maybe quilt? I don't know, we'll see where the project will bring me).

And since for the Paper Piecing Vintage 2014 I picked white and blue as colors as well, I decided to put some of those blocks around the Tea Towel!! Plus some more elements that I still have to design myself :)

I will use half of the tea towel because the other half is completely white... but that part will be used in the paper-piecing part so nothing will be wasted! :)

This is going to be a big challenge for me because I don't like to work with white.
But I choose it on purpose to push my boundaries! :)

I am very excited about these events!
Let's see if I will be able to keep up with the deadlines... if not that's life!

Monday, December 2, 2013

It's called Alice's Game and the story behind the quilt is the following.

When I read that the challenge was to use some charm-packs a chessboard design was the first that came to my mind.

Then I remember that the book "Through the Looking Glass" (which is the second book of Alice in Wonderland) by Lewis Carroll starts with a chess-game.

Then I remember that the wonderful Jennifer @ Sewhooked had a pattern on Craftsy called "A friendly game" that consist of all the chess pieces, with paper piecing!! And they where almost the same size as the charms...

Note that I didn't even check which kind of fabric I had to use :)
I just bought 3 charm-packs and waited for them to arrive.
Then when I tried to put together the chess-board I realized that some of the prints where not very "chessboard-like"... some of them where kind of almost light enough to be in the board... but not quite... so what to do? I didn't want to buy fabric for this project... so you know what I did? I turn them on the wrong side! :) in this way they where still blending gracefully with the rest of the charms, but they were lighter so more suitable for a chessboard :) :)
Some other colors/prints made it to the border... and some made it to the back :)

Also the back was totally unplanned.

The left-over blocks were flowers and greens... so I though I could put together a simple "garden-like" back.
But then I had two or three half blocks of pinks and purples... and they just screamed at me "Chesire cat!!" And from there it was just a matter of collecting other scraps from the charm-packs, adding the brown, and I got the back!!
I don't even know if I like the front or the back more... I think that the quilt has two fronts :) :)

BTW: this is what is left from 3 charm-packs... I really really used the fabric that was chosen for the challenge :)

Vote for me!! Please Please Please!!! :) :)
To vote you just need to +1 me following THIS LINK on Google+,
and/or LIKE my project on FB forllowing THIS OTHER LINK :)
The 25 projects with the most votes will go on to the final round of voting. You can like more than one project... but please please please, can you like mine too? :)